Deadpool 2: Negasonic Warhead's Girlfriend Isn't Who You Thought She Was

Deadpool 2, debuting in theaters this weekend, has received heaps of praise for its on-screen LGBT representation. The film includes a lesbian relationship between Brianna Hildebrand's Negasonic Teenage Warhead and a mutant character named Yukio who was introduced in the sequel. While some speculated the character could be a version of Surge from the original X-Men comics, the screenwriters behind Deadpool 2 have confirmed to CBR that is not the case.

Speaking with CBR's Albert Ching, scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick debunked the theory that Yukio, the character played by Shioli Kutsuna, is in fact New X-Men's Surge.

"That's not right," Reese said in repsonse to the suggestion that Yukio could be a version of Surge. "She's a super-minor character. The character's name is actually Yukio, an assassin -- but who's an adult assassin, so we just aged her down. She's such a minor character, we thought we could pretty much get away with anything."

He added, "And Shioli's amazing. I really think we have to do her more justice going forward -- not as though we did her injustice, but she just didn't have a lot of screen time. I'd love to explore the Yukio character more."

Providing some context for their decision to bring Yukio, specifically, to the big-screen, Wernick said, "Fox has a bible of all 400-plus characters that they have rights to. We generally, when we're building out a movie, look at that list, and kind of go through and go, 'Oh yeah, yes, yes, no, love that name, oh those powers are cool,' and we build that cast that way. Yukio jumped out at us as just a character we would love to see further explored."

It seems Deadpool 2's Yukio is based on the same Yukio featured in 2013's The Wolverine, as portrayed by Rila Fukushima. Considering the wonky timeline of the X-Men movies, it could be entirely possible that Yukio's trajectory in the cinematic universe (and age) was altered since the events of The Wolverine. Or, perhaps, Reese and Wernick weren't aware the character already made her live-action debut.